When former All Black Nathan Harris signed up for the first-ever AIMS Games 20 years ago, rugby wasn’t an option.

So, he played football instead – and lost all but one game.

But, he says, the iconic intermediate-aged sports tournament was never about winning or losing. It was about building long-lasting friendships and wearing the school’s jersey with pride.

The 32-year-old’s impressive sporting career has seen him pull on the All Blacks, Chiefs, and Bay of Plenty Steamers jerseys.

In 2004, he proudly wore the AIMS Games jersey for the Te Puke Intermediate football team at a sporting tournament that two decades later has become the “talk of the town”.

Captain of Te Puke Intermediate’s Tai Mitchell rugby team at the time, Nathan signed up.

“I loved all sports, so I thought I would chuck my name in,” he says. “But when I went to sign up, there was no rugby.”

The first-ever tournament had 17 schools with 760 competitors playing in just four sports: football, netball, hockey and cross country.

It was Nathan’s “sports-mad” English teacher who came up with the idea of entering a football team.

“We had three-quarters of us who were legit football players and the rest of us were rugby players,” says Nathan.

He had played football once before as a 5-year-old.

“I was left-footed,” he says. “I used to practice kicking a ball around the house.”

Former All Black Nathan Harris is now the Pāpāmoa College sports teacher. Photo / Jamie Troughton, Dscribe Media.

With rugby in his DNA, Nathan remembers being “courageous” and “brave enough” to play a sport outside his field.

The team “didn’t do our best”, he remembers.

“We had some close losses. But on the last day, we won against Fairfield Intermediate.”

But the scores didn’t matter.

“It wasn’t really about winning or losing, but more about the connections and how sport brought people together.”

“It’s that sense of community and building those friendships. It was the sense of representing not just myself, my friends, and my family, but my community and my school. Every time I put on that jersey I felt a sense of pride.”

As Tauranga is set to welcome nearly 13,000 athletes from 390-plus schools to compete across 27 sports for its 2024 competition next week, Nathan says it’s exciting to see how big the games have become.

“Now, it’s the talk of the town,” he says. “It keeps people coming back to the Bay of Plenty.”

His advice to the thousands of athletes taking part in this year’s games is to simply, “enjoy it”.

“Think about the fun aspect of it, the friends you will make, and the people you will meet,” he says.

“Soak up every chance you get to put on that sporting outfit and to wear that jersey.”